A US coast guard rescue swimmer on his first rescue mission as well as teenage counselors who helped shepherd cold and wet young campers to safety have been credited with saving dozens of lives at a flood-ravaged Christian summer camp on the banks of Texas’s Guadalupe River.
Their stories of heroism and fortitude – including the counselors’ writing young campers’ names on their arms and legs with Sharpies so that authorities could identify them if necessary – are among the first to emerge recounting the grim reality of the torrent of water that surged Friday through the all-girls Camp Mystic, where at least 27 campers and counselors are known to have died.
As of Tuesday morning, a further five campers and one counselor remained unaccounted for.
Coast Guard petty officer Scott Ruskan, 26, of Oxford, New Jersey, spoke of plucking mud-covered children to safety after his helicopter crew flew through appalling weather to reach the campsite in rural Hunt early Friday afternoon.
He and his colleagues, he told the Washington Post, were greeted with scenes of devastation, and dozens of children, teenage camp counselors and staff desperate to escape.
“That’s how quickly this floodwater rose,” he told the newspaper in a phone interview. “They didn’t have time to grab shoes. You’re just carrying kids that don’t have shoes on, they’re covered in mud, and you’re trying to get them out of there.
“Some of it was simply talking to them and consoling them and trying to make them feel comfortable.”
Ruskan, who joined the Coast Guard in 2021 and qualified as a rescue swimmer only last year, is credited with saving at least 165 lives during the three hours he spent on the ground triaging children and adults, and prioritizing the evacuation of the neediest cases, many on board Texas national guard black hawk helicopters.
Many of the counselors, he said, were not much older than the young girls they were chaperoning – and they deserved credit for their role in saving lives. He said some told him of throwing children through windows and doorways to escape the fast-rising floodwater.
“It was some really heroic stuff by those camp counselors,” Ruskan said. “I really hope they get the recognition they deserve.”
Two Camp Mystic counselors, 19-year-olds Silvana Garza Valdez and María Paula Zárate from Mexico, spoke to the Mexican news network Televisa about the ordeal, which they said began at about 3am on Friday when electricity to the camp went out.
But it was not until about noon, they said, that counselors were informed that some areas of the sprawling 725-acre campsite had been flooded and survivors were gathered in a dining hall. The pair said the urgency of the situation was becoming clearer, and they began preparing girls in their care for what might be to come.
“We began writing the girls’ names on their skin, wherever it could be visible,” Zárate said.
“We told them to make a bag with all their things, whatever was most necessary … to get ready to evacuate. But we didn’t know if they were going to evacuate us or not, and so we waited.”
They attempted to calm the frightened girls with songs and games as they watched furniture and other camp equipment washing by as the water rose higher.
“All the girls started going crazy and crying because they didn’t want to leave the camp – because they wanted to be with their parents,” Garza Valdez said. “It was a terrible situation. I don’t know to explain it. It was something very awful.”
She said she and those with her didn’t initially realize others at the camp had died.
“What they spoke to us about at the time was that 25 girls were missing – and that two were found at a nearby campground alive and well.”
They did not have their cellphones with them to be able to know more about the situation that was unfolding – or call their families – because the devices were kept in the camp’s front office, Garza Valdez said.
Their group was eventually rescued by a military team that arrived at the campsite at about the same time as the Coast Guard and national guard.
“I felt like I was in a dream – I didn’t think it was true,” Garza Valdez said.
“I don’t think I understood the gravity of the situation until we saw it leaving on the army trucks. It was terrible. A week before, we were sleeping in the [hardest-hit cabins], and so simply it was difficult to process that they had moved and that we are alive” because of that.
Ruskan spoke of the frustration of not being able to reach Camp Mystic immediately. He told the Post that early reports of flooding were received by 6.30am Friday, and his crew was in the air by 7am – but had to redirect to San Antonio because of zero visibility.
They finally landed in Hunt at 2.30pm, knocking over archery targets in a field from the helicopter’s downdraft as they descended.
The former financial consultant recalled that his trainers told him that his first rescue missions would be unlike anything they taught him to expect.
“That’s kind of the point,” he said. “The expectation is that everyone is looking for someone to not be a hero, but kind of help them out and get them situated.
“That’s what they needed me to be, and that’s what kind of was in this case.”
